90\u00a0 Sunny, hazy\u00a0\u00a0 Airquality alert in Nashville.\u00a0 Suggested:\u00a0 Limit trips.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0deep south is close.\u00a0\u00a0Tennessee was one of the upper slave holding states at the beginning of the\u00a0civil war and did not secede with the lower south states of South Carolina,\u00a0Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas and tomorrow’s destination, Alabama.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Murfeesboro, Tennessee\u00a0has the Stones River Civil War Battlefield.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Today’s journey was and is hot.\u00a0 As the road pushed further into southern Illinois, there were signs for college majors in coal mining.\u00a0 Carbondale, home of Southern Illinois University was in the vicinity.\u00a0 These are also unglaciated limestone hills sitting atop layers of plant life from the Carboniferous, now black and concentrated into veins of coal.\u00a0 Heat and coal and the underground, the cthonic realms go together.<\/p>\n
The Ohio river, the mighty Ohio, flexed its muscles today, swollen muddy and fast.\u00a0 It was over its banks and looked like it would get higher.\u00a0 This is a big river and where it feeds into the Mississippi\u00a0multiplies the river we call the Father of Waters.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Kentucky, which never seceded and therefore allowed Union access to the south side of the Ohio, continues, in the main, the rolling limestone hills in southern Illinois.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Paducah, home of the National Quilter’s Museum and the only place in the US creating nuclear fuel for electricity generation from out of date Russian weapons (literally swords into plowshare), is not far from the bridge over the Ohio.<\/p>\n
At Russert’s, a woman named Keeum (Kim) took mah ordah.\u00a0 Cahtfeesh.\u00a0 She was real nice.\u00a0 She gave me a to go order of iced tea.\u00a0 Good food.\u00a0 Boy, the folks must like it down here, it’s roly polyville.<\/p>\n
Nashville had a freeway down, but there was a quick way around the bottle neck and I found it.\u00a0 Cities do not draw me in as they once did.\u00a0 I find myself more interested in the quiet, secluded setting and Murfeesboro, though a city, does not intrude too much out here near the Stones River Battlefield.\u00a0 I’ll go there in the morning, then scoot on down to Prattville and the Plantation Bed and Breakfast.<\/p>\n
I finished a 24 lecture course on the American Revolution in the 11 plus hours I drove yesterday.\u00a0 A nice setup for the 48 lecture course I began today on the Civil War.\u00a0 Fits right in with the trip.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
90\u00a0 Sunny, hazy\u00a0\u00a0 Airquality alert in Nashville.\u00a0 Suggested:\u00a0 Limit trips. The\u00a0deep south is close.\u00a0\u00a0Tennessee was one of the upper slave holding states at the beginning of the\u00a0civil war and did not secede with the lower south states of South Carolina,\u00a0Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas and tomorrow’s destination, Alabama.\u00a0\u00a0 Murfeesboro, Tennessee\u00a0has the Stones River Civil War … Continue reading Swollen Muddy And Fast<\/span>